What Resources Can Boost Your Efficiency As You Begin Your Marketing Career?

Maintaining efficiency can be difficult in the marketing field, especially if you’re just getting into marketing. There are many online resources and tools to support you in becoming more productive.

The amount of distractions facing employees in the modern workplace is astounding. From instant messaging tools and social media to collaborative working spaces, maintaining productivity levels can be a struggle for even some of the most ambitious people, and it’s no different in the marketing field.

Today, marketers must be knowledgeable about lead generation, web traffic strategies, product marketing, blogging and much more. How do marketers find time to hone these skills, while speaking with clients, collaborating with coworkers and maintaining a positive work-life balance? They use expert advice and free or low-cost resources that help them become more efficient marketers.

What simple strategies can help marketers save time each day?

There are plenty of productivity tips online to support any overwhelmed marketer today. With mounting responsibilities and startup companies rolling out disruptive new technology every quarter, you need to save any time you can spare in order to spend it on other work endeavors. To begin shaving off a few extra minutes each day to maintain workplace efficiency, here are a few helpful productivity tips from marketing experts:

• Create to-do lists: Making to-do lists is easy and will help you track your progress throughout the day. Not only is it oddly satisfying to check off completed tasks, but many apps and tools can also allow you to prioritize certain responsibilities by order of importance or time commitment. The Guardian listed several of the best to-do list apps from last year, including Wunderlist, Todoist and more.
• Cut down on interruptions: Do you get distracted checking your emails every few minutes? Or does your productivity level plummet because co-workers keep coming into your office with questions? To limit these interruptions, set aside specific times of day to check email or meet with employees.
• "Listen" to music: Wear your headphones even when you're not listening to music. When people see your headphones, they may be more hesitant to interrupt you when it isn’t a high-priority situation because you're "in the zone."
• Hide yourself on instant messaging: As easy as it might be to answer simple questions over chat, you should mark yourself as invisible or busy. Not only will this keep multiple chats from clogging up your inbox, but it also encourages people to reach out by email only if something is really important.
• Block off an hour or two on your calendar: While it might seem sneaky, block off an hour or two of " meetings" a day, during which you can work without distractions.

What resources can boost your efficiency as a marketer?  

All marketers need a resource toolbox at their disposal to hone their craft and gain productivity at work. From using data-driven tools, to implementing simple editorial Excel calendars to maximize content marketing success, there are plenty of solutions available to support your efforts toward efficiency. Here are a few resources to consider, depending on your particular efficiency problem:

• When you're stuck coming up with topics: Use HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator to come up with blog ideas in a matter of seconds. Simply enter three different nouns and HubSpot will do the rest of the work to suggest blog titles. While you might have to play around with it until you find what you need, this is a great way to get out of writer's block.
• When you need easy access to analytics: You simply cannot beat the efficiency and free price tag of Google Analytics. It will track all traffic for your or your client's website, and with the help of online resources, you can learn how to effectively leverage the insights you gain. In an age where metrics and data-driven results are king, you need tools like this at your disposal.
• When you need help with social media: If you're overwhelmed by posting schedules, make your life easier with Buffer or Hootsuite. These social media management tools allow you to plan out social media posting times and become instantly more organized.
• When you need help with paid-search marketing strategies: Kissmetrics provides an excellent list of 44 resources to help marketers regain efficiency in their paid-search marketing.

In addition to these marketing-specific resources, there are plenty of online solutions designed to maximize your and your team’s productivity, from the online workplace Sococo to the project management solution Teamwork. Use any of these strategies and tools to boost efficiency in your new marketing role.